


flame and shadow

by straight_up_gay



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, and kylo ren is a twisted dead thing, in which rey is an uncompromising flame, it is emphatically not reylo, this is not reylo, who has to squint in the light of her goodness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 05:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9704099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straight_up_gay/pseuds/straight_up_gay
Summary: (Kylo Ren is a rotting wound. Rey is raw and bright and merciless, a purifying desert wind. He never stood a chance.)





	

Anyone who’s even a little bit Force-sensitive feels uncomfortable around Kylo Ren. For those less strong in the Force, it’s an unshakeable clamminess, a tingling in their hands and spine. For the unlucky few who are stronger, it feels like dark choking fog. Few of them realize what’s happening, but they can all feel the wrongness of him. One promising young general resigns his post on Starkiller after a month of hideous dreams, full of thorns and dried blood.

(What Kylo Ren is isn’t something you can be born, or even made. It’s something you have to make yourself into.)

But this discomfort is nothing to how Kylo Ren feels around Rey.

***

“You need a teacher!” he shouts, over the wind and his vicious headache. It blots out the hole in his side, the nausea in his bones. In this moment, it’s all he can feel.

Her aura is like nothing he’s ever felt before. Luke Skywalker’s had been gentle, tinged with the greeness of new growth after fire. His ~~mot~~ General Oregana’s had been bubbling under everything she did, subterranean.

Rey’s _hurts_. He can barely stand close proximity. To touch her again, as he had during the interrogation, would be agony.

(Kylo Ren is a rotting wound. Rey is raw and bright and merciless, a purifying desert wind. He never stood a chance.)

***

He tracks her across the galaxy, a shadow in her wake. Some of Snoke’s men whisper that he’s obsessed, that the shame of being beaten by a mere scavenger girl has driven him even madder.

It’s not that, exactly. Every battle is a trial by fire, and he rarely gets the upper hand. He still burns in her presence, still feels like the inside of his head is being scraped raw.

But it’s the first real thing he’s felt in twelve years, the first thing that isn’t grey and dripping.

So he follows her again and again, as she grows stronger and something in him burns away.

***

They’re in the forests of Corellia, and Rey knows she’s winning. Ren has lost his mask, and his face looks white and waxy, like the dead preserved in the desert sun on Jakku. He no longer scares her, even in dreams.

She swipes under his lightsaber, a pattern worn smooth from previous battles. Only this time, he can’t bring his blade down to catch hers. He stumbles, leg caught by the tip of her sabre, and falls to the ground. His blood doesn’t look fresh, even pouring out of him.

The air stands still. Kylo Ren kneels at her feet, looking up at her with an unreadable expression. Just for a moment, she feels him, the dark swampy chaos of his mind. One clear thought breaks the surface, uncrusted by blood or mud.

“Please,” he says, such an unfamiliar word coming from him that she almost laughs.

Without fanfare or tenderness, she slides her lightsaber between his ribs and back out into the green air.

Before he topples to the ground, he gives her a brief, terrible smile.

**Author's Note:**

> saw someone talking about how their favourite rey&kylo ren dynamic is "nothing romantic happens and rey mercy-kills kylo" and i'd like to say from the bottom of my heart: same.
> 
> shoutout to: coffee, my poor impulse control.


End file.
